


The Stolen Page

by Masu_Trout



Category: Vampyr (Video Game)
Genre: Enemies to Lovers, Established Relationship, Human/Vampire Relationship, In-Universe RPF, M/M, POV Outsider, Post-Canon, Rumors, Secret Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-07
Updated: 2020-08-07
Packaged: 2021-03-06 06:06:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,257
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25758556
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Masu_Trout/pseuds/Masu_Trout
Summary: The Guard of Priwen's mission is to rid the world of leeches. So why is there a pair of them, living in the heart of London, who McCullum refuses to have killed?The soldiers of Priwen speculate. And gossip. A lot.
Relationships: Sean Hampton/Geoffrey McCullum/Jonathan Reid
Comments: 5
Kudos: 68
Collections: Battleship 2020, Battleship 2020 - Ocean Witch, Battleship 2020 - Yellow Team





	The Stolen Page

**Author's Note:**

  * For [greygerbil](https://archiveofourown.org/users/greygerbil/gifts).



> Thanks very much to ba_lailah for betaing this!

"I can't _believe_ you—"

Hector winced as the journal he'd been furtively paging through was torn from his grasp, turning to stare into the eyes of his enraged patrol partner.

"What do you think you're doing, huh? Rummaging through a woman's belongings like that!"

McCullum liked to tell them that there was no man or woman out here on the London streets, only soldiers and the monsters they hunted—but somehow, Hector thought, throat sinking into his stomach as Ethel loomed furiously over him, he had a sneaking suspicion that this wasn't exactly the situation McCullum'd had in mind when he said that. Nor did he think the excuse would fly with Ethel.

"I was only curious," he protested, scrambling back off the overturned box he'd been using as a stool when she stalked closer to him, "you were just looking at it so often, and writing in it, and—"

"Of course I am," Ethel snapped, "it's fine literature I'm making, isn't it? For the glory of the Guard of Priwen, to exalt our holy fight against the monsters that stand against us."

"Er. Is it?"

"Hector," Ethel warned.

"It's just, I thought I saw a name—"

"Hector."

"—And I know Mr. McCullum is, ah, the impressive sort, but I don't know that—"

" _Hector_."

At long last, Hector's mind caught up to his tongue. He snapped his fool mouth shut, and begged it to stay closed.

Ethel's cheeks had gone a ruddy color—from the chill in the evening London air, no doubt. She stood there looking at him a while longer, book clutched tight to her chest as if she thought he might try to rip it from her arms, and then she said, "Just—forget about it, all right? Stop being so damn nosy."

"All right," Hector said, hands raised. "I'm sorry. You're right. I won't mention it again."

It wasn't so remarkable, was it? McCullum fought leeches better than any of them, after all. It made sense to want to memorialize. It was only that the scraps he'd seen... he hadn't ever considered that McCullum might spend so long talking to leeches as he fought them, or that he'd think on their appearances so thoroughly as he did. But then, that was what made it art, wasn't it? Like the Greeks did, and all that.

She was right, he knew; it had been wrong to pry. And anyway, even if she _had_ been in the wrong, it was less important to be correct than it was to keep the peace with a person who had use of a flamethrower and would soon be wandering down gloomy, monster-infested streets with him. An irritating man had a way of looking like a Skal in the dark, he'd found.

She eyed him once more, suspiciously, and then tucked the book back beneath her jacket with one last grumble of, "It's art, anyway. You wouldn't understand."

Perhaps not. He'd be all too happy to forget about all of it.

—

_"Leech," spat Geoffrey furiously, the word rolling off his tongue along with a drop of blood._

_The two monsters across from him watched it fall; he could see the feverish light the fruits of his body lit inside of them, brighter than the torch he was using to keep the pair at bay and even more dangerous._

_Jonathan Reid: a striking, twisted monstrosity of a man, his face as handsome as the angel Gabriel's even with those devil's teeth of his bared to reflect the firelight. And beside him, just as focused and just as deadly, Sean Hampton: the redheaded leech with a tongue of silver and claws of black blood-soaked iron, whose looks had been in no way marred by the vicious scars that death had marked him with._

_"Geoffrey," purred Sean, his tone far too familiar, "such mistrust. Can't we offer you our help?"_

_Beside him, Jonathan smiled darkly, the look in his eyes promising a relief from the pain currently coursing through Geoffrey's body—or to be the cause of more of it, if his hunger won out. And a leech's hunger always did._

_These two would be the death of him if he hesitated for even a moment, Geoffrey knew. They'd happily subject him to one of their demonic orgies of sin, take his flesh in their perfect sculpted mouths and milk every drop from him until he was a creature of filth and derangement like them. Until he wanted it._

_So why hadn't he had them hunted down and driven into the sunlight? Why had he given them protection from his band of proud, honorable soldiers, the men and women who he trusted above all? And why, damn it all, couldn't he look away from the agonizingly perfect faces of these two beasts?_

_Deep down, Geoffrey already knew the answer._

—

Hector didn't forget about it.

It was something that'd always caused him trouble in life: once he'd starting thinking on something, he couldn't make himself stop.

"I'm just saying," he said, "it's strange, isn't it? That Mr. McCullum's ordered us to stay away from those two leeches, and no others?"

" _Mr. McCullum_ , hah," said Mack, a silver-haired Guard veteran with a face like pummeled meat. "And anyway, it makes plenty sense. They've, ah... they've got... fuck, you know. They've got big lairs. Lots of humans around. Take time to kill. Geoffrey doesn't want you dumb rookies goin' in and killing yourselves on 'em before he can get hunting them figured out." He spat into the fire their little band had gathered themselves around and gave Hector a dismissive look. "Rookies like you'll feed 'em all the blood they ever could need right outta your own bodies if Geoffrey lets you."

Technically they were supposed to be on guard duty all down the street, the five of them, but the night was long and the leeches weren't biting anywhere near this side of London tonight. All the good action was going down in Whitechapel tonight, with Priwen flushing out a Skals’ nest beneath one of the abandoned buildings there, and they all to the last of them shared a vague sort of resentment over being forced to miss it.

Before Hector could protest either his own intelligence or his cowardice—he wasn't sure which it would be, but he _did_ know there wasn't a chance in hell that he'd go up against leeches like the doctor or the preacher willingly—Twitch cut in.

"I dunno," he said, "I don't think it's that." True to his name, he was drumming the fingers of one hand against the top of his trousers restlessly, making a little pattering noise that was just audible enough to be obnoxious. "It's like rat-catching, innit? You don't kill 'em all right when you find 'em, you keep a couple and breed 'em up—"

"Like you know a god-damned thing about rat-catching, you couldn't catch a Skal with all its limbs sawed off if it fell asleep on top a' you—"

"My da was a rat-catcher, fuck you—"

" _Anyhow_ ," cut in Meredith, eyeing them all. She was among the guard's best gunners—had once shot the teeth right off an Ekon, the stories went—and like all the guard's gunners she thought she was above the common leech-hunting rabble. She was looking at them like she resented being dragged into their stupidity, but not nearly enough that she wouldn't join in anyway. "If McCullum were keeping them like that, wouldn't that mean he were breeding them too? You think McCullum's trying to make _more_ leeches?"

There was a pause while they all considered the idea of McCullum breeding leeches in general and breeding those two leeches in particular. Hector was reminded all over again—suddenly and with an embarrassed sort of flush—of the story he'd seen of Ethel's.

What was that he'd seen, the last line he'd managed to read before Ethel snatched the book away? _Geoffrey already knew_ , or something along those lines. Did that mean Ethel had some sort of clue to why McCullum acted the way he did?

Or maybe it was just more of the art of it. Better for the book than just saying she didn't know.

"Course not," Twitch finally said, his fingers drumming a bit slower. "He wouldn't want more leeches."

"More to kill," rumbled Raul, finally breaking his silence. The words came out alongside a trail of smoke from the cigarette clenched between his teeth.

"And more people they can kill in the meantime," Meredith countered.

"It's not _that_ ," Twitch said, cutting back in. "I mean, maybe—maybe he can make ratters of 'em?"

"What, like the dogs?" Hector asked. His only knowledge of ratters was little black-and-tan terriers.

"Yeah, exactly. I mean—what better than to kill a leech than a leech, right? You get 'em cozy with you, get some collars and muzzles and whatnot on 'em, and there you go. Imagine how fast we could root out a Skal's nest if we had a couple leeches like them tamed down for us."

"Idiot," Meredith said, "are you going to be comfortable sleeping beside a leech, then, no matter how tame it is? Keeping one at the foot of your bed while you're asleep and it's awake and hungry?"

_That_ shut Twitch up—but into the resulting silence, Hector couldn't help but say, "I mean, _I_ wouldn't, but maybe Mr. McCullum would. He isn't afraid of any sort of leech. If anyone could manage it, it'd be him."

"That's true enough," agreed Mack, as if the matter was settled. And maybe it was, but—

He couldn't stop thinking about the line in Ethel's book— _Geoffrey already knew_ —and about what Twitch had said too. Taming the two leeches down, making captive beasts of them...

Maybe it was that simple. Maybe he was being stupid. But the two thoughts seemed almost to twist together as he was staring into the fire's rising smoke, watching it curl over itself as it drifted up and up and up, until he couldn't imagine Geoffrey getting the upper hand on those two leeches, until he couldn’t imagine the three of them being anything but evenly matched.

—

He didn't stop wondering after that, not exactly; Hector never stopped wondering about anything, once he'd started. But he didn't get much further in his thoughts and he didn't really bring it up with anyone else among Priwen either. He just turned it over in his mind like a strange sort of souvenir, thinking about the leech at Pembroke and the leech at the Docks: both of them living their treacherous unlife night after night under the protection of Geoffrey McCullum himself.

It wasn't that he mistrusted McCullum. There was no one Hector trusted more intensely or more instinctively; if McCullum had ordered him to jump into a pit of starved Skals, Hector would've done it in a heartbeat and trusted McCullum to yank him back out with all his limbs intact.

The only thing that kept him wondering was the curiosity of it, the sheer novelty. He imagined Reid, the leech that called itself a doctor, informing McCullum on the movements of wounded leeches around the city; Hampton going out at night for his preaching, and slipping past McCullum to whisper information on some new Skal den. He imagined McCullum, desperately wanting the pair of them dead more than anything in the world, but unwilling to risk the lives of his soldiers in an operation against two such monstrous creatures. He imagined them having a truce; an underhanded one, of course, unfair in the cowardly leeches' direction, but one McCullum was too honourable to break. And sometimes—on mornings where he couldn't sleep, staring up at the ceiling above his bunk with a strange sort of feeling in the pit of his stomach—he imagined what Twitch had talked about. McCullum making the two of them his, bringing them to heel.

As it turned out, though, he didn't need to bother thinking about it. The answer fell right into his lap on the night of the attack.

After, some of the Priwen folks said it was vampires from overseas come to test their luck on a weakened London, and others insisted it was fresh blood out of that leech-pit called the Ascalon Club, eager to show off their newfound skills and sate their newfound hunger. Hector, personally, didn't much care with it was; all he knew was that it was fire and blood and every pair of hands on deck, Priwen fighting in the streets and alleys of Pembroke for its honor as killers of monsters—and, less, triumphantly, each soldier fighting for their life with all the desperation of the rabbit hunted by the hound.

They were rabbits with teeth, thankfully, or at least with guns and knives and firebombs. Helped even up the fight. But Ekon were worse than Skals, worse than even Vulkods; they called shadows to their aid, they let their shapes shift and reform, they used the very blood that made them monsters as a weapon. And they were clever, too. Humans, but with the humanity ripped out of them.

All in all, by the time Hector staggered through the doors of Pembroke Hospital, he was just about ready to drop. He had a deep bite on his ankle where he'd paid the price for mistaking a greviously wounded leech for dead, and his arms felt near-dead themselves with the strain he'd put them through.

The fighting was winding down, in Priwen's favor, but it was not yet ended—and it would be nobler to say he'd come here for medical attention so he could rejoin his brothers and sisters in battle, or that he'd hoped to help guard the wounded himself, but the truth was that he was merely tired.

At this point, Hector couldn't have raised his weapon if his life depended on it. He needed a place to rest for a minute where he might not have his throat ripped out in the process.

And he'd forgotten about the leech that ran this hospital—forgotten entirely about any leech he wasn't actively fighting, in fact—but he remembered quickly when he heard a voice down the hall.

"Fuck, you beasts sure know how to throw a party. How do you think they knew that a chance to murder your lot was my favorite sort of gift?"

McCullum's voice, tired and raspy but still strong. Hope coursed through Hector; he took a few unsteady steps forward before coming up short at the sound of a reply from a stranger's voice.

"I'll make sure to let Lord Redgrave know you enjoyed it when I see him next."

"Before or after you try to rip his throat out, you mean?"

"Oh, I've no doubt there'll be a lull in the fight where I can fit it in."

"There's been fighting enough already tonight," another voice cut in, rather disapprovingly. "Must we talk of even more while we stand amongst the bodies?"

Not just one man in the hallway with McCullum, but two. And there was something strange about the way McCullum was talking to them, a vicious edge to his words that somehow didn't match the fondness Hector could hear in his voice. He crept forward a little further, step by step, until he could peer out around the corner of the hall and see—

Hector pulled himself back behind the wall so fast his head spun. _Leeches_.

And not just any leeches, either. He might not have ever seen the duo in person before, but he'd listened to more than enough Priwen gossip to recognize them anywhere.

Reid. Hampton. McCullum's two special, singled-out leeches.

In the brief glimpse he'd gotten, he'd seen both of them standing above a sitting McCullum, each of them drenched in blood—matted in Reid's beard, turning Hampton's red hair a brownish-black, smeared across McCullum's coat and the knife he held loosely in his lap. But neither of the leeches was lunging for McCullum, and they both sounded... civil. Almost kind. Nothing like he'd expected a blood-maddened leech to be.

It wasn't good to eavesdrop. Hector was better than his idle curiosity. But he held his breath and stayed pressed flat against the wall anyway, listening to the three of them speak.

"There's going to be a fight, whether you want one or not," McCullum said, steel in his voice. "I'm not sitting back forever and letting my people get picked off."

"I know there will be." Hampton, again. "And I'm not saying I disapprove. Even a shepherd must be ready to take up arms, if it's to protect the flock from wolves. But there's a time to kill, and a time to heal—and right now, I think, we should be in the latter."

"Some leech you are," McCullum sighed, the fury gone from his voice as suddenly as it had come.

"We're terribly disappointing, I know. And speaking of disappointing, are you intending to let me take a look at that bite, or are you planning to lie there until you bleed out on the floor?" Hector could hear the amusement, very barely restrained, in Reid's voice.

They all sounded so terribly fond of each other. There was none of the firebrand fury Hector was used to in McCullum's voice now, and none of the hunger or rage he would've expected from leeches finding the leader of the Guard of Priwen alone and defenseless and wounded. Hector had no idea what to make of it, except—well. There were theories he could form. Strange ones, more absurd than any he'd heard suggested by even the wildest Priwen gossip. But that would mean something Hector could barely wrap his mind around.

If it were true, should he tell someone? If McCullum were... colluding with leeches, so to speak, then he was compromised. Someone ought to know.

But then again, Hector had no idea who he'd even tell—there was no one above McCullum, and for that matter there was no one Hector would rather follow into battle, no one who he'd ever wanted to imagine taking McCullum's place as their leader. He was the sort of man who only appeared once in a generation, who no one else could stand in comparison to. And so, he reasoned, the gears turning in his head, if McCullum _were_ doing something with these two that went beyond simple leech-hunting strategy, then that simply meant McCullum's leech-hunting strategy was far more complex than Hector or anyone else at Priwen could comprehend. He'd gotten them through this attack, after all, with Priwen still alive and fighting, and he'd talked right here about finding the leech responsible and killing them. There could be no doubt about his competence or his loyalty to the cause, no matter the beasts standing above him.

It made sense to keep his thoughts to himself, then; it would be perhaps the first time in his life Hector had ever done such a thing, but for McCullum he would manage it.

"What," McCullum asked, "you want to move me? Can't you kneel down here and take a look at it?"

"Not tonight, I don't think," Reid said, sounding somehow even more amused than before. "It would be rude to treat you without treating our other guest, after all"—a sharp intake of breath, then, as loud as the pounding of Hector's heart in his ears—"and I believe he's injured fairly badly himself."

_Damn it_. Hector cursed his own stupidity. Hadn't he known Reid was a leech? How had he not expected him to scent his blood, dripping as it was down his ankle to soak his trouser cuff?

When Hector crept guiltily out from behind the wall, though, there was neither malice nor hunger in the eyes of Reid and Hampton. If anything, it was McCullum who looked angriest with him. Hector flushed a miserable red when he caught sight of his leader's less-than-impressed glare.

"Hello, Hector. And how long have you been standing there?"

Even through the overwhelming mix of embarrassment and terror that could only stem fromonly staring down two blood-soaked leeches and his own hero disappointed in him could provide, it still gave Hector a little thrill to realize McCullum remembered his name.

"I," he stammered, "I'm—I'm sorry, I thought it would be rude t-to interrupt."

He tripped over his words with how fast he rushed them out, cheeks so hot he half-feared they might begin to melt and slide off his face.

"Be kind, now," Hampton rebuked McCullum. And then, turning to Hector, "Are you all right, child? You look exhausted."

He gave Hector a smile that he was sure was meant to be reassuring. Somehow, despite the extended fangs, and the blood drying tacky across his face, and the crusted-over scars on chalk-pale skin that marked him as a leech, it actually made him feel better.

"I'm not a child," Hector said, a little stubbornly—he was nineteen, after all, a full-blown man in any sense of the word—but when his ankle twinged and nearly sent him crumpling to the floor, he admitted, "And, I—I'm wounded, a bit. Not badly! But a lee—a _vampire_ got my leg, down near the ankle."

"Call them what they are," Geoffrey said. "A leech is a leech."

Reid made a little noise in the back of his throat. It wasn't a laugh, but it wasn't _not_ a laugh either. "There's two of us and one of you, McCullum. Your soldier's smarter than you are."

McCullum clearly had a retort in mind for that, but before he could get the words out Reid was turning towards Hector again.

"Vampire bite, hm? Ekon, I'm assuming." His nostrils flared unsettlingly. "And dirty, too. I'll need to clean that out. Here, sit down, beside McCullum," and by the time Hector remembered he ought to flinch away from a leech's cold touch, Reid was already helping lower him to the ground against the wall.

And he didn't lunge once, or bite, or snarl; didn't so much as lick the blood off his fingers as he cleaned first Hector's wounds and then McCullum's, washing and medicating and finally bandaging them both with a practiced ease that would be impressive for a human and was downright astonishing for a creature who had to be fighting the urge to devour them both alive the whole time he was working. And Hampton, too, was there the whole time: handing vials or bandages to Reid as he needed them, finding with unerring accuracy the perfect time to distract Hector with some simple, easy question—"Do you have a favorite place in the city?" once, and a little later, "So, has the weather lately been treating you well?"—whenever Reid's careful touch stung enough that Hector began to worry he might embarrass himself in front of McCullum by tearing up.

It was somehow soothing, incredibly: the cold hands, the pale faces, should have cut through any kindness in their words or carefulness in their gestures. But when Reid moved on to McCullum, Hector watching from the side as the two of them gave him that same patient tenderness, all Hector could think was that he understood.

If he were McCullum, and he'd met these two, he would've called a truce with them too.

—

It wasn't until after the two had whisked themselves away—leaving McCullum to stroll out of Pembroke proudly, ready to rejoin his Guard of Priwen, with Hector limping along at his his side—that Hector dared glance up at McCullum from out the corner of his eye and say, haltingly, "Well, they could have been worse, I suppose—"

"Don't," McCullum interrupted with a snarl. A muscle jumped in his throat. Hector fell silent. "Just—don't."

"Sir—"

McCullum sighed and caught Hector's eye. "I know you mean well," he said, surprisingly gentle. "I get it. I do. But this didn't happen, all right? I don't want you to get in the habit of trusting leeches."

"But..."

"It's not worth getting fond of any of them, you know, you can't trust a leech. Their nature is what it is. They'll do anything they can think of to get you close enough to make a meal out of you, no matter how long it takes. And even if you _could_... it's too complicated, in the end. Dangerous. For everyone involved." There was a long, long moment of silence, then, broken only by the sound of their footsteps, and finally McCullum added, quietly, "I'll kill those two someday. That's all there is to it."

It was the first time Hector had ever heard McCullum lie. For a man who'd succeeded at everything Hector had ever seen him try, he sure wasn't good at it.

But Hector didn't press him on it. He just said, "Yessir," and followed at his heels the rest of the way back, to the men and women of Priwen who were waiting on McCullum. Relying on him.

He thought to himself, though, as they finally made it back, turning everything he'd seen and heard over and over in his mind. McCullum might not be good at lying, but he was good enough at everything else to make up for it; if there ever was a man who could make the thing he'd seen between them there in the hospital work, could survive trusting not one leech but two, then it would be McCullum.

And maybe it was foolish, but Hector hoped he did.


End file.
